Another crushing Swedish DM release! - 80%

The Malfeitor entity came into existence (supposedly) already back in 1990, but I guess this time until 1995, when the first incarnation of the band has split up, have never fruited in demo recordings, so it doesn’t really matter. When Benny Moberg started Blood Mortized in 2007 he also decided soon later to reform Malfeitor, for whatever reasons. I do must admit that the debut demo, “To Hell, Farewell”, from 2011 – which later was released on CD as a split with Birch Mountain – hasn’t impressed me that much and it was rather mediocre quality Swedish sounding death metal. Therefore I didn’t really feel like “Dum Morior Orior” would be an album that I’ll get interested in. Well, Hellthrasher Productions helped with it, by making sure that I review it, so here I am, sitting in front of the laptop and listening to those Swedish zombies at 1:15 am.

I must admit that my first impression on “Dum Morior Orior” was very mixed. At the beginning I was quite sceptic about the band and also on the first listen I really thought that this is yet another old styled Swedish death metal album, but one of very mediocre quality and basically one, which do not bring anything exciting to already very exciting scene, so I was more eager to skip it than really bother to listen to it more. But I did against that and kept on listening to “Dum Morior Orior” and I think I should be glad about that as I started to like Malfeitor more with every new listening. It’s almost weird that something like this happened, because “Dum Morior Orior” is not a demanding album and with such LPs you usually get into them immediately or not at all and then just leave them behind. Maybe it had something to do with the equipment on which I listened to Malfeitor, as at first I listened to it on quite old and shitty headphones, but later I putted the album on my big stereo system and finally Malfeitor’s music got some aggression and brutal energy which I felt was lacking at first. This is when I really discovered the potential and awesomeness of this band.

When “Conversation in Minor” kicked off with first riffs, it was like a bomb, which exploded right in your face. And next tracks, like the impressively catchy, but fast as hell “Beyond the Horrorizon” and brilliant groovy horror anthem called “To Hell, Farewell” just carried on doing the slaughter, which I welcomed with opened arms and all my knives and axes sharp and ready to massacre. Malfeitor plays some really killer and devastating tracks here and so “Dum Morior Orior” is truly a blast. Of course there may be discussions whether it’s any point to listen to yet another band like Malfeitor… because I’m not gonna lie to you. Malfeitor is not original at all and their music pretty much repeats what dozens of other bands have done earlier. There are also few new bands from the new wave of old school death metal, which I think are better than Malfeitor – I can think of Interment, Tormented, Intestinal, Entrails, Graveyard, Torture Division just to name few really. But who cares, if “Dum Morior Orior” is still so cool and skin bashing? Malfeitor has really solid songwriting, good performance, the productions is OK here also, so I can’t see any reasons why “Dum Morior Orior” should not be in the collections of all die hard death metal maniacs out there! Trust me; these are some really killer 40 minutes, which will be a real feast for enthusiasts of the Swedish style and the likes of Entombed, Grave, Torture Division, General Surgery, Facebreaker. What I like about “Dum Morior Orior” especially is that how often it is fast, how uncompromising and aggressive (sometimes even grinding) this album is, but still with many memorable and catchy parts, and that in all that blasting ferocity Malfeitor did not forget about some melodies or even doomy parts. In the end I think that “Dum Morior Orior” has everything what such musical genre as old school Swedish death metal should have. Really cool, yeah! I like it!
Standout tracks: “Conversation in Minor”, “Beyond the Horrorizon”, “To Hell, Farewell”, "And the Sky Turn to Rage", "Exile From Sanity"